Note 47 — STEPPES AND DESERTS.

p. 24.—“The rain-announcing howlings of the bearded apes.”

The melancholy howlings of the small apes, Simia seniculus, Simia beelzebub, &c., are heard some hours before the rain commences: it is as if the tempest were heard raging at a distance. The intensity of the noise produced by such small animals can only be explained by their number; seventy or eighty being often lodged in a single tree. On the organs of voice of these animals, see my anatomical treatise in the first chapter of my Recueil d’Observations de Zoologie, vol. i. p. 18.